As infections ease, Covid beds free up in Delhi hospitals

NEW DELHI: The Capital on Wednesday evening had over 4,000 vacant ward beds and 98 vacant intensive care unit (ICU) beds for Covid-19 patients for the first time since the second week of April, when coronavirus cases started rising rapidly. To be sure, the city has added over 7,000 beds for Covid patients since then, of which nearly 2,000 are ICU beds, according to the Delhi Corona app.

Of the 23,345 hospital beds in Delhi, 4,682 were vacant as on Wednesday evening, putting the occupancy rate at 79.9%. Of the 5,911 ICU beds, 98 were vacant, putting the occupancy at 98.3%.

In comparison, on the evening of April 16, only 443 of the 3,989 ICU beds for Covid-19 patients were vacant, putting the vacancy at 87.9%.

About 10 days later, on April 26, the city had completely run out of ICU beds -- the app showed just 12 empty beds that day, and 11 of them were for pregnant women infected with Covid-19; the other remaining bed, at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, was already taken.

Doctors see this as a sign of the Covid-19 situation gradually easing in Delhi. “The situation is improving; now, there are oxygen beds available in the hospital and we do not have to refuse any patient. We have restarted all admissions. The ICUS are still full because patients, once admitted, need nearly three weeks to recover from Covid-19,” said a doctor from one of Delhi’s large private hospitals, asking not to be named.

On Wednesday, Delhi reported 13,287 new Covid-19 cases, marginally up from Tuesday’s 12,481, according to the state health bulletin. These figures are far less than what was from the average 23,000 new cases reported daily during the last two weeks of April.

The Covid-19 test positivity rate has dropped slowly, but steadily over the past three weeks, since it peaked at 36.24% on April 22. It has dropped every day for the past five days, and fell to 17.03% on Wednesday.

Another doctor from the Delhi government-run Lok Nayak hospital said on condition of anonymity: “The rush of patients in need of admissions has reduced over the past two or three days. Earlier, we were getting 150 to 170 patients each day; that has gone down to about 80 to 100 daily.”

A doctor from Burari hospital said the oxygen demand has also stabilised. “Not only has the supply of oxygen been streamlined, the requirement itself has gone down a little,” he said.

Delhi health minister Satyendar Jain, in a press briefing on Tuesday, said, “At the moment, there is no problem with beds in relation to oxygen. The demand for oxygen is decreasing now that the cases are going down, but we should keep getting the oxygen; otherwise there will be problems. We need 700 MT of oxygen daily, and we are getting a little less than that currently.”